Sociology and the Myth of the Crisis

Ever since Comte, sociological scholarship is predicated on the legitimizing image of being the science of crises and conflict. The dealing with crises has attended to the question of how they arise, how they may be prevented through sociological insight, and what role they play for the functioning of our socio-cultural reality. According to A. Weber sociology itself is a „daughter of crisis“ entering the academic world in the so called saint-simonian time of modernity; a period of change, tremors, uncertainty and unsettledness be it with regard to the political, the economic or the societal order. Even nowadays, we can witness the topos of crisis and conflict as being the ever renewed funding myth of our discipline by e.g. having a brief look at the major themes discussed at various national and international congresses of sociology.

Within our contribution we will show that whilst early sociologist have both attempted to understand the outbreaks of crises in order to cope with these anomic jolts and believed in the eschatology of a cathartic grande crise finale, recent sociological theory mainly regards crises as a part of a social drama and all the uncertainties accompanied as constitutive for the structuring and the stabilization of the routine of social reality. Herein crises are no more labeled as punctual outbursts but seem to offer an omnipresent model of contemporary social reality. Positing that the routinization of crises is at the stake of present sociological narrations, we will finally question how this ever-present dystopian corrective of tremors can function as a ‘challenge of reality’ (Baudrillard).